NASA Clipper Duet Depth Transducer, Part 1

Click-Click-Click !  That’s the sound of a new depth transducer working – the most beautiful sound we’ve heard in a long time !  With the bad luck we’ve had lately, we fully expected the worst.

The new depth transducer.

Having little experience with these creatures, here’s what I learned after calling NASA Marine Instruments in both England and France (who, curiously, provided exactly the same advice).

1.  Re-initialize the system to its default settings if you think the problem may be in the instrument rather than just the transducer head.  How to do this is not provided in the instruction manual, so here it is:  (NOTE:  this will reset your total trip log to ZERO !)

• With power off, hold down and press the TOTAL key and the ILLUM key simultaneously.
• Turn the power on
• Continue to hold about 4 seconds, then release both buttons simultaneously.
• The display should read ALL SET, then LOA.  It has now been reinitialized. 

2.  Put your ear to the transducer and listen for the clicks.  If it is not clicking, the transducer is not working.  Hurdle number 1: borrow or buy a new transducer, plug it into the display unit and listen for clicking.  If you do hear clicking, you aren’t out of the woods yet.  You need to verify that the display unit is also functioning.  You can check the display unit by rubbing the palm of your hand on the transducer (as if polishing it).  The OUT should change to random numbers.  This is where we declared victory earlier today.

In our joy, we went ahead and pulled out the old transducer cable and passed the new one in its place.  Our next challenge is to figure out how to (gently?) remove the old transducer from the through-hull fitting without damaging the through-hull support that we would like to reuse.   

The through-hull assembly we hope to re-use.

After studying this at home, I realized that the black screw cap has to be slid onto the cable of the new transducer BEFORE passing the cable through the boat to the display unit.  Merde ! Oh well… it wasn’t a difficult path and we’ll just have to take it out and re-pass it after putting the cap on.  On to the next hurdle.    

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Inspection Day

The New Year's Day incident definitely left a few marks (pretty impressive ones) but today's inspection showed that the damage was all cosmetic.  It's going to take more than a few dabs of anti-fouling paint, however, to patch her up.  The most frustrating news is that the echo sounder seems to be dead, and changing it will mean we will have to keep Spray out of the water until we can get the right model / parts.  I had hoped, naively, that the problem was the result of algae build-up.  I am going to check for corrosion in the coaxial cable itself and then try changing the gain threshold to see if I can get any signal out of it (in air? will that work?), but I am aware that these are the actions of a desperate (ignorant?) boat owner.  Stay tuned... 

Spray's underbelly versus metal oyster tables in 40 knots of wind.

Lead keel after 21 days exposed to seawater.

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Chronicle of a Mooring Failure Foretold

After talking with the crew who rescued Spray when she broke away from her mooring on New Year's Day, we’re beginning to piece together what happened.  (See Out with a Bang 2)

Before we left the boat moored in the river, we knew that there was a risk of gales over the 10 days we intended to leave her hanging from the buoy.  But we had not anticipated a double-depression with Force 9 winds blowing straight up the river with no wind break of any kind over a +24 hour period.  First mistake.  We put out two new 14mm nylon lines with rubber hoses as chaffing gear, leaving enough scope on both lines so that the buoy could run well in front of the boat and not be held vertically.  The rubber hoses were fixed into the lines with tie-wraps so that they wouldn’t slide. 

The original mooring configuration.  Looks so flimsy now in retrospect...

The theory is that one of the lines was simply cut by chaffing on the (rusted) buoy ring.  The rubber hose evidently put up a brave fight but was no match for the rapid swell.  The other line, it appears, was cut by the anchor, securely fixed in its davit.  The wind and currents pushed Spray from different directions, putting her at a 90 degree angle to the buoy and pulling the line over the exposed anchor blade.  There was no chaffing gear there and it must have gone quickly.  Did not see that one coming…

For mooring in calm weather and when we are on the boat, I think our 2 line system is still trustworthy.  It’s easy to tie up to a mooring using this configuration without acrobatics of any sort.  However, to reduce chaffing further, we may replace the rubber tubing with some sort of fuzzy fabric protection, which has the added advantage of being more flexible and would allow us to tie a bowline or simple round turn directly on the mooring ring.

But for the rough stuff or anytime we intend to leave the boat unattended, we need something better.  After reviewing several books and web-sites, our favourite system that seems both sturdy and relatively easy to put into place is a slight modification of the bridle shown in the photo below, posted on the French site Hisse-et-Oh by internaute "margotte". 

Next time, with slight variations

The bridle loop is fixed to the mooring buoy with shackles (swivel would be best).  The shackles are connected to the line by two plastic hard-eye splices. The line is protected on the boat side with rubber tubing (or one of the new fabric versions), with one branch of the loop passing through the davit bow roller and the other branch fixed to the cleat (passed around the cleat with a locking figure-8 line over it).  For this bridle, we may upgrade to 14mm (4400 kg resistance) polyester (Dacron) lines instead of nylon. 

In practice, we would still use our simple out-and-back lines to tie up, then attach the bridle arrangement by leaning over the bow to fix the shackle, or by simply putting everything in place and fixing the shackle from the dinghy before going ashore.

To know how this story ends, we have to wait until 22 January when Spray will be hauled-out and inspected for damage.  It’s been a useful experience and one we will try not to repeat !  

For more articles on anchoring, visit The Monkey's Fist !

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Out with a Bang 2

After our last adventure (Out with a Bang) we thought we could sail smoothly into 2013.  It was not to be.  Announcing the news to our local friends went something like this:

Us:                   “Hey, did you see the article in the newspaper on Wednesday with the headline ‘An Intervention by Maritime Rescue Service in 40 knots of Wind’ about a sailboat that broke away from its mooring and ran aground on the mudflats of an oyster park?”

Friends:           “Yes…ha ha… idiots don’t know how to tie up a boat for a gale…”

Us:                  “It was Spray.”

Friends:           various sundry explicatives.

We discovered this when we climbed aboard Spray on 2 January to move her to the port of Vannes (out of harm’s way for the winter gales…) and realized our mooring lines had been replaced by an elaborate web of lines and knots.  What was left of our mooring lines was in the cockpit.  A friend had told us about the article in the paper that morning, and we, too, laughed.  “Ha ha …can’t be us.  We’ve got 2 heavy mooring lines protected with rubber tubes.”  A call to the Société Nationale de Sauvetage en Mer (SNSM, our maritime rescue service), confirmed ‘twas indeed Spray.

The mooring lines added by the SNSM.

What was left of our mooring lines.

 Here’s a translation of the newspaper article:

An Intervention by the SNSM in 40 knots of wind

It is perhaps the last intervention of 2012 for the SNSM in the Morbihan Gulf.  This afternoon around 15h00, the crew was called out to the Auray River.  In gale-force winds (> 40 knots), a lovely 10.5 meter sailboat parted from its mooring buoy and ran aground in the oyster park in front of Fort Espagnol.  To get the boat out of the oyster park and prevent it from running aground on the coast, a boat and a semi-rigid zodiac (rib) and 6 crew members were called to the zone.  A diver was required to enter the water to help extract the boat.  The intervention lasted two hours.  The sailboat was towed and re-attached solidly to another mooring buoy in the river.

Patrick’s first reaction to the article was “Did you see that? They said Spray was lovely!”  In response to my glare, he continued, “Well, they could have said a sailboat owned by two idiots who don’t know how to tie up for a gale.”

And that’s the frustrating thing.  We thought we HAD tied up for a gale.  In 10 years of sailing on 25 different boats with 25 different skippers, we could never have imagined that our 2 new 14mm lines protected by rubber hoses could get sliced through in one storm.  The string of our mainsail tarp also got sliced in two…and that was cotton string rubbing against supple plastic !   A friend who looked at our mooring said we should have tied a bowline knot in the tube itself around the ring of the mooring buoy to eliminate as much chaffing as possible.  Oh sure, seems obvious now.

Oyster Park where Spray decided to spend her New Year's Eve.

Spray is now nestled down in the much-protected port of Vannes, tied up at the dock with water and electricity, an easy 15-minute walk from home.  There was no apparent damage, no water, no fissures or cracks, but we now have to have her taken out of the water and inspected by an expert from our insurance company.  If you’re wondering (as most of our friends were) the bill from the SNSM is 800 Euros ($1040 USD), most of which the insurance will pay. The oyster park manager says he didn’t have much damage, just a few of his oyster tables pushed over, which he can put back in place without too much trouble. 

One friend said, “No damage, no injuries, well-insured, and happened in winter when the sailing sucks anyway …pretty lucky !”  Another says Neptune has apparently decided to offer us an accelerated training course in the vagaries of the sea for 2012.  I sure hope that was the final exam. With time and distance (and whiskey), we’re beginning to get over the shock and add this to our ever-growing list of “at-sea experiences”.  Live and learn..

Out of the way of winter gales in the port of Vannes.

For more articles on anchoring, visit The Monkey's Fist ! 

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Out with a Bang

It was only meant to be a short out-and-back trip to the Port of Crouesty to replace the heating system.  Three days and one call-for-help later, we made our way back to our mooring in the Auray river with a new heating system and a burning desire for a long quiet holiday.

The new heating system (Webasto) was supposed to arrive at the electronics shop on Friday -  Monday at the latest.  Tuesday morning, we sailed the one hour down to Crouesty for the installation, with plans to return to the gulf on Wednesday morning with the last of the incoming tide.  There were special weather bulletins warning of near-gales (Beaufort 7 with gusts) but our gulf, protected by a larger bay, doesn’t usually see the full force of such gales and we knew we could manage a little “rodeo” if we had to.

The system never showed up.  The electricians went ahead and removed the old system on Tuesday afternoon and confirmed that the system would arrive early Wednesday morning.  We decided we could put off our return until Wednesday afternoon with the 2^nd incoming tide.

Wednesday morning came and went with no deliveries.  After delaying as long as we could, we decided to leave and make an appointment to install the new heating system in early January.  Patrick informed the electricians, who apologized for the delays and wished us happy holidays.

We cast off and headed into the channel with a 17-knot headwind.  The channel is rather narrow, with shoals and rocks on either side (see image below).  We decided to motor out of the channel and then, turning north to head into the gulf, we would have a tailwind that would give us a smooth sail home with just the genoa headsail.

As we reached the penultimate channel marker, the engine sputtered and died. What the !*%$?  We tried to restart it twice, pulling out all the tricks we’ve learned over the last 4 months without success.  After the 2^nd try, I told Patrick we needed to get the sails up fast.  We were already drifting outside the channel towards the rocks.  He went below to try one more trick to restart the motor while I prepared the mainsail.  After flailing around to unzip the lazybag and get the halyard ready to run, I realized we were no longer facing the wind but had been blown onto a broad reach … impossible to hoist our heavy mainsail at 90 degrees to the wind.  I didn’t know if we could point into the wind sufficiently with the genoa alone, but we didn’t have much choice.  With a loud snap, the genoa unfurled rapidly in the stiff wind.  I winched it in flat and Spray responded immediately.  The answer is YES, we can point into the wind (rather well, in fact) with just the genoa, although it’s not particularly stable or comfortable.

The Crouesty Channel - site of our first "incident".

With the boat now manoeuvrable and headed back into the channel, we were out of immediate danger but were still “in a pickle”, as we say back home.  Patrick called the Harbour Master on the VHF radio to tell them we were coming back into port under sail.  They responded immediately and told us they would have a boat meet us at the breakwater to help tow us into a slip.

As we headed into the port, it dawned on me what had happened.  The electricians had removed the heating system the night before, which runs off the main diesel fuel reservoir.  They had opened up the fuel line that feeds the heating system and didn’t close it off, thinking they would be installing the new system before we left. Oops. As soon as we got the boat tied up, we looked at the reservoir, and sure enough, the diesel valve was closed and the intake tube to the absent heating system was open to the air. 

The culprit.

Patrick went to express his strong disappointment and returned with a very pale electrician and his manager.  They re-attached the old pump to close the fuel circuit, allowing us to use the engine while waiting for the new heating system to arrive.  But it was too little, too late, and we’d missed the ingoing tide to the gulf.  We decided to sit it out another night in port and head back into the gulf the next morning

But later that afternoon, the electrician showed up proudly displaying the new heating system that had just arrived.  He was willing to work late and start again very early the next morning and assured us everything would be installed by 10:45 am, allowing us to catch the last of the tide.  At noon, they finally finished.  I calculated that we would have about 2 knots of current in the nose, but with 21 knots of wind on a broad reach, we decided we could push our way through.  It was a bumpy ride, but we made it back to our mooring just as a squall arrived.  We prepared the boat and waited for a break in the weather. 

When the dinghy was loaded and ready to go, I looked around at the sky and saw a steel-grey front headed our way.  I wanted to wait it out, Patrick wanted to try to outrun it.  I lost the battle but won the war in the form of a moral victory, which, truth be told, is only of minor comfort.  It was, by far, the STUPIDIST thing we’ve ever done. (Patrick, too, now admits this.)  As soon as we were in the middle of the river, still 5 minutes from shore, the grain overtook us.  The waves built up behind us and we were surfing, fighting to keep the dinghy at an angle to the waves so that we wouldn’t be flipped sideways or swamped from the waves breaking behind us. Pelted by wind-driven hail, visibility was nil and the only thing we could do was to follow the waves.  There was no way to aim the boat where we needed to go without turning over.  After several long minutes of white-knuckle petrifaction, we made it to an anchorage area where several large boats provided enough of a wind shield that we could redress the direction of the boat to head to the dock. 

I felt sick.  Patrick said “Woo Hoo !  We made it !” 

Later that night, we both realized that every muscle in our bodies ached from the stress.  We agreed that this whole adventure was an important learning experience, not to be repeated if at all possible.  And thus ends 2012 sailing with Spray.

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Cold Weather, Warm Camaraderie

This week’s outing was our first winter-weather trip on Spray, complete with watery eyes, heavy frost and icy mornings.  It was also the trip where we discovered that our on-board heating system is dead.

Spray with frost on her boom and ice on the docks.

In port, we have two different heaters we can use running off of shore power:  a fan heater that heats up fast and chases away the humidity, and an oil-bath radiator that gives off a steady (and quiet) heat for the night.  When we’re at anchor, however, we have to rely on the boat’s heating system, which runs off the diesel fuel for the boat.  It worked well a month ago (when we didn’t need it), but stopped working now that it’s really cold.

Alone on Hoedic Island ... with shore power !

But when you have neither shore power nor on-board heating on a cold night, the next best thing is to be rafted up in between two big friendly boats with warm saloons and crews.  We met up with two boats from our local sailing club (Aldiana, an Oceanis 323, and Argo, a Romanee) and spent a lovely evening moored at Belle Ile, bouncing between the three boats:  drinks and munchies on Argo, back to Spray for dinner where we could heat the boat with our own cooking, then over to Aldiana for desert, and a quick jump into our winter-weight sleeping bags back on Spray.

Sailing with other boats means photos of yours under sail !  Thanks, Argo crew !

In between the cold weather and warm camaraderie, we actually managed to fix a few things.  Since the weather has turned cool, we noticed that the GPS takes almost 20-30 minutes to home-in on 3 satellites necessary for a position fix.  I suspected condensation and a bad contact, and after heating, drying, and insulating the connection to the antenna, things work brilliantly.*  I’ve been complaining for some time about our schizophrenic auto pilot, and after moving a 12 kg anchor that was just below the flux gate compass and re-doing the entire sea trial calibration (swinging the compass, auto-learn process), things work very well.  Having a reliable auto-pilot is a huge relief when sailing short-handed.  Patrick bravely fixed the toilet for a second time.  He replaced the pump assembly a couple of weeks ago and everything worked well for 3-4 days before seizing up again.  (For the more curious among you, the answer is NO, we do not put anything down the toilet that has not first passed through our own bodies.)  After reading some helpful hints on sailing forums, he dumped a bottle of cooking oil down the pump assembly and that seems to have done the trick.

Our 5:25 pm sunset and a late arrival into port this week also gave us the opportunity to realize that none of our running lights were working.  They had been working well a few weeks ago. When the electricians came to check out the heating system, they found some very unorthodox mingling of wires between our AIS system and the running lights, including one completely melted wire. Once the wiring got straightened out, we had to change the bulbs that had been fried during some mystery power-surge.  That, of course, meant climbing the mast and changing 2 bulbs.  Long story short:  wrong bulbs and stuck light-cover casings meant FOUR trips up the mast in very cold weather.   

Winter not only brings cooler temperatures and shorter days but also storms, and Spray’s mooring lines suffered severe chaffing over the last 2 weeks during several gales that had her tugging and bobbing on her mooring ball.  If we hadn’t had the protective garden hose on the mooring line, it would have been cut in two.  Of course, we always have 2 mooring lines attached, just in case…  We’ll be very glad to move Spray into the port of Vannes at the end of the month !

Winter storm chaffing.

Today the high temperature is 2 C (35) and we’re enjoying a cozy day at home…getting price estimates for boat heater replacement.  They don’t make replacement parts for our 20 year old heater anymore, so it looks like we’re in for a new system.

Just think, starting in 2013, we’ll have a boat docked a comfortable 15 minute walk from home and all her systems and sails will have been recently repaired !  Glass half full, glass half full, glass half full…   

*note:  this issue was resolved several months later when I discovered the notion of TTFF:  time to first fix.  The fact that the GPS was taking forever to get a fix when we first fired it up in cold weather had nothing to do with the cold weather or condensation, but the fact that we weren't sailing as much in the cold, and thus, had not turned the GPS on regularly.  When you turn on the GPS, it has to download a lot of information.  If you've turned it on recently, those updates are relatively fresh and take less time.  If you don't turn it on for a week or more, you'll have to wait. (Some sources say up to 15 minutes... we waited 30-40 after leaving it off for a month.)  

For more articles on winter sailing, visit The Monkey's Fist !

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The Quarterly Report

Having spent most of my career as an international civil servant, I can still write quarterly reports in my sleep. (Some of my best work was done that way.)  In a fit of nostalgia, I decided to drag out my U.N. reporting language and results-based management training to give you this update on our first 3 months of sailing Spray.

Title:                                              The Spray Project
RESPONSIBLE OFFICER:              Me

FUND CENTER:                              Him

Expected Results:  World peace promoted through travel-induced education and culture at the individual level.

Implementation strategy:  Buy a boat and sail it around the world.

I.  Identification of needs:  Education and cultural awareness promoted through travel is a proven method for facilitating world peace.  Implemented at the individual level, this process is a cost-effective way of building community networks that can foster synergies at national and global levels.

II.  Modalities of action:  Buy a boat, learn how to maintain it, learn how to sail it short-handed, gain experience in a protected environment, gradually expand range and conditions of sailing, sail around Europe and the Mediterranean, begin world tour.

Performance indicators: (method of verification = self-reporting):

1. Days at sea this quarter:  28 days out of 92 = 30% 
2. Miles logged:  difficult to determine as speedo was not calibrated until early October and only discovered later that this information could be obtained from the main GPS unit (which also sometimes doesn’t work). 
3. Short-handed sailing manoeuvres mastered :
   • Hoisting and furling sails (10/10)
   • Tacking (9/10):  Genoa lines get snagged on railings, shrouds, etc.  Rollers not yet in place.
   • Jibing (9/10): Not 100% smooth on all occasions with only 1 person handling both the main and headsails.
   • Reefing the main (8/10): Sticky automatic reefing system not fully mastered yet.
   • Changing the headsails (10/10).
   • Hoisting the Spinnaker (0/10, see knowledge gaps). 
   • Port manoeuvres (7/10):  Needs improvement, taking into account wind conditions and best order for fixing lines in given conditions and port configurations.
   • Mooring buoy manoeuvres (10/10).
   • Anchoring (9/10):  More experience needed for choosing the most comfortable site given wind and swell conditions, horizontal area and water depth available, and length of chain.
4. Environmental Conditions Encountered:  dead calm on several occasions, several moderate squalls of up to 25 knot gusts with heavy rain and 2 meter swells, one major squall with 37 knot gusts, heavy rain and 3 meter swells.  Several occasions of fog, one in total white-out conditions for several hours while sailing close to a labyrinth of rocks.
5. Navigation Range / Places visited:  Hoedic Island (Port), Houat Island, Belle Ile (Ports and Moorings), Groix (Port), Port Haliguen, Port Crouesty, Auray River.  Ports = 55%, Moorings and Anchorages = 45%. Longest sail = 8 days.
6. Maintenance techniques mastered (9/10):  see Annex 1 (Maintenance Log).  Most maintenance, repairs and installations performed without outside professional help.

Knowledge gaps

1. The auto-pilot, very important for short-handed sailing, is still temperamental and thoroughly untrustworthy.  I recently removed the spare 12 kg anchor from the cockpit locker that was perhaps too close to the auto-pilot compass flux-gate, which seems to have reduced its schizophrenic tendencies.  We need to put the pilot through the “automatic learning procedure” described in the manual, and then manually set various features to optimize performance.  We also need to replace the 2^nd ball joint under the steering column to reduce play in the tiller, which should also improve pilot performance.
2. Hoisting the spinnaker has been put on hold until the auto-pilot is able to assist.

Next quarter goals

1. Repairs and Upgrades for next quarter:  fix the lazy-bag support on the boom, replace plexiglass on portholes, investigate leak in the exhaust system waterlock, add waste water holding tank, change 2^nd ball joint under steering column, fix rollers on lifelines to facilitate passage of Genoa, add coconut fiber / latex mattress support to aft cabin to reduce humidity, figure out why AIS system is not recognized by MaxSea navigation software.
2. Winter training, sailing in colder / wetter / rougher conditions.  Expand range of navigation if weather permits.

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Back to Basics

Less than 6 hours after leaving our mooring buoy in the Auray river, we were back to basic sailing:  no GPS, no computer with navigation software, and no toilet. 

The GPS has been having difficulties for a few weeks.  I suspect a bad connection that seems to be curiously affected by the cold and/or humidity.  We managed to get it operational after opening the back panel and blindly jiggling some wires, but it still takes about 20 minutes for it to warm up (?) and get a satellite fix. The computer we took out this week was a back-up computer that, we discovered, didn’t have an appropriate driver for the small mobile GPS.  And the toilet had been showing some early signs of a leaking seal in the hand pump and finally decided the time was right to break down completely.  Fortunately, we could still evacuate the toilet, so we just had to keep a bucket of seawater handy for flushing.

But the good news about getting back to basics is remembering how to navigate without gadgets.  In an area we knew fairly well, with reasonable visibility, and with good charts, a compass, and plotting tools, I had great fun navigating the old-fashioned way.  After a day in port with an internet connection, we managed to download the driver for the computer GPS, but I found that I actually preferred to use the main GPS and charts instead.

The rest of the week was full of lessons and adventures as follows:

We pulled into the lock basin at the port of Le Palais on Belle Ile (a first for us) and were promptly greeted by Gerard, our sailing friend from Vannes introduced in last week’s blog, who was out for a few days with another Vannes sailor, Gilles, a retired French Army colonel. 

Spray double-parked in the lock basin of Le Palais, Belle Ile en Mer.

We spent a lovely evening on board Gerard’s motor cruiser, dining on “French individual reheatable combat rations” provided by Colonel Gilles.  Gilles said our boat was a jewel and he appreciates good Kentucky Bourbon - I liked him immediately.

We rented bikes and toured Belle Ile with Gerard and Gilles, including Port Goulphar with its light house, Port Coton with its famous Needle Rocks immortalized by numerous impressionist painters, and Port Donnant with its large sand beach.

Goulphar Lighthouse, Belle Ile.

Gerard points out the good mooring spots to Patrick at Goulphar.

The Needle Rocks, Port Coton, Belle Ile en Mer.

Patrick: "I want to moor Spray HERE."

The beach at Port Donnant.

Turquoise water amongst the rocks on Donnat Beach.

We got a useful lesson in boat heating and humidity control (not to mention comfort) from Gerard and as a consequence we will soon be purchasing both a small electric fan heater and an electric oil-bath radiator for use in ports during the winter.  

We left the port at Le Palais to head to the island of Groix but light winds inspired us to spend another night on Belle Ile at the port of Sauzon in hopes of better winds the following day.

Our wish was granted to excess:  we left Sauzon for Groix with lovely force 4 (15 knot winds), growing to a bracing force 5 on a close reach (i.e, 20 knots in the nose), strengthening to 6 with gusts to 8 (37 knots) and 3 meter seas underneath the 3 successive squalls that hit us.  A crossing to remember.

Double rainbow after passage of one of the squalls.  Small compensation...

We learned that we need to close the cabin and head doors when faced with 3 meter swells.  The hinges suffered badly.

We rented bikes and visited the island of Groix and its wild south coast.

South coast of Groix.

We learned that we need to revise our estimates of boat speed for a given wind speed.  Spray is much faster than we’re used to and we can get 6-7 knots out of 10-12 knots of wind (especially if we calculate the currents just right…).

Our only companion on the water that day:  a Sinagot, the traditional fishing vessel of the Gulf.

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